Biennial elections to Upper House: Congress picks 7, nominates Mallikarjun Kharge, Pawan Khera from Karnataka

2 min readNew DelhiJun 5, 2026 04:19 AM IST

The Congress on Thursday named seven picks, including its national president Mallikarjun Kharge, for biennial and byelections to the Rajya Sabha.

In addition to Kharge, party’s media and publicity department chief Pawan Khera and AICC secretary Mansoor Ali Khan were on the list of nominees from Karnataka. The party is pipped to win three of the four seats which have come up for vacancies in Congress-ruled Karnataka. From Madhya Pradesh, the party nominated Meenakshi Natarajan, the AICC in-charge for Telangana and considered close to Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi.

While AICC secretary Pranav Jha, attached to Kharge’s office in his capacity as party president, has been nominated for the Upper House from Jharkhand, AICC member and the party’s former general secretary for the state unit Neeraj Dangi was renominated from Rajasthan.

The list also included Praveen Chakravarty, who heads its professional wing and technology and data cell, for byelection from Tamil Nadu where the party recently formed government with Vijay-led TVK.

According to sources, the TVK gave the Rajya Sabha berth to the Congress following the resignation of AIADMK leader C V Shanmugam from the Upper House given his election to the Tamil Nadu Assembly.